Farewell to summer

Morris dancers performing an ancient ritual dance...




http://www.hump.org.uk/

-free...-less... de-...

Alcohol-free wine, lactose-free milk, sugarless sweets, decaffeinated coffee, artificial insemination, immaculate conception... Where's the substance in all that?

Grand vistas? This one isn't!

I love grand vistas... This one sucks. It comes from Microsoft. I tried to update with SP1 after a number of mishaps with is compatibility with several popular tools. Several attempts failed. Having despaired I resorted to M$oft support. The advice was to trurn off a number of 'things' and 'prepare' by installing dozens of patches. I was left with a wrecked system that I had to rescue and rebuild from scratc.
Grand vistas? This one isn't!

Of nut trees and BlackBerries

I had a little nut tree,
Nothing would it bear,
But a silver BlackBerry
And a golden pear.

The King of Spain's daughter
Came to visit me,
And all for the sake
Of my Black Berry.

I skipped over the water,
I danced over the sea,
And all the birds that's in the air,
they couldn't catch me.

I dropped it in the briny
I dried in in the sun
My BlackBerry rebooted!
It's such good fun.

I got back all my messages
and wish that I had not,
they tell me that my project
is quickly going to rot.

I have a little BlackBerry
nothing would it bear
but a lot of trouble
and a loss of hair.

Planting a family tree

I do hate gardening. I must be the most reluctant and inept gardener of all; but I do like gardens and nature at large.

I was taken by the idea of planting a tree; one that grows fast and takes little care. Some people who had the same urge chose the wrong tree. They planted ..a family tree. They were in for a nasty surprise:

• Firstly, family trees grow rather slowly; one should be lucky to see more than a branch or two in a lifetime.
• Secondly, the take a lot of care. And as for the cost... it is inestimable and unaffordable even to the very rich.
• Thirdly, they break up in storms and the fires of war. People try to trace their shape; fail and resort to fiction.

Now, that's an idea: professional services in fictional family tree creation.

• "What do you want your family to have been, Mrs Whassaname? Clergymen? Bankers? Navvies? We can mix and match, and write stories about how they met and mated..."
• "I want my mother's family to have been colonials; my father's to have been landed gentry with a bit of artistic blood thrown in for a good measure - maybe a great aunt who was an author and a brazen woman in the 1930s..."
• "Done. We charge £1000 per century. £1500 if you want it to have collaterals on the Internet. How much do you want to spend?"

Nice work is you can get it. Let us plant a family tree for you today.

Swiss cuckoo clocks?

Harry Lime in "The Third Man", claims that 'under the Borgias, Italy had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.' Well, not even that, one might think, given that cuckoo clocks really came from the Black Forest.

However, Switzerrland does have a thriving defence industry and exports technology to other countries to conduct war. No, not clockwork tanks. Switzerland also offers a safe banking base for all sorts of 'gun-running' activities. The prosperity emanating from such unsavoury activities underpins the country's peace, democracy, etc.

So, it looks like Harry Lime got it wrong both ways. It's a sad world, isn't it?

Money in the Bank?

Once upon a time, people used to say "It's money in the bank", meaning something safe. They also used to say "Safe as houses". In a world of failing mortgage banks, such expressions have a hollow ring.

My bank lost money. Mine. It gambled on my behalf. If I wanted to gamble, I would have gone to a casino and have some fun doing it; not to a bank. I now have to ...rob a bank to make up for it. There is no point robbing 'my' bank; I have to find one that has lost other people's money. Banking security being only marginally better than HM Revenue and Excise, the chances are ...they won't even notice...

The media will be full of stories: "BartlerBank has sent $2 zillion through internal mail in an unsealed envelope and now it's gone missing". The bank's governor will play it down: "It was $2 zillion of fake money; all forged really, used in inter-banking transactions. Nothing to worry about". The Banking Regulator, who was found in possession of some of the missing money, denounced BartletBank for using fake money for bribes, promising better supervision in the future. The Treasury offered BartletBank a 1-for-1 replacement of fake banknotes with real ones, just printed for the purpose. The Shadow Chancellor improved on that: two real banknotes of each fake one.

What? Did I hear you accuse me of rumour-mongering? Did you say that keeping the rest of my money in a sock under the mattress is an overreaction?

In the Land of the Dangerously Boring

Having taken a vow of anonymity I cannot receive anything from anybody; not even help. You can transmit your help to me ...transcendentally and without knowing the route. Use IP Multicast :-)

I seem to suffer from a peculiar form of mental illness. The shrinks give me anti-depressant medicines that don't work but won't have me locked me up because I don't harm myself or anybody else physically. Maybe I should start harming people mentally; then somebody might complain and the shrinks will have me locked up. So, here we go. I've just started.

I can't use mental cruelty of any sort; blogs are useless as a medium of intimidating or humiliating readers. Instead, I will use boredom. I know it works. When somebody or something bores me, I feel like destroying her/him/it. You, of course, can't do that because you don't know where to find me. So, you will complain to Blogger and the complaint will eventually go to the shrinks who will probably decide that I am dangerously boring and ought to be put away.

Exiled in the Land of the Dangerously Boring, I will publish boring nonsense -like this- on a private network, inaccessible from the Internet. The network will have many stations. I will publish from one and read from another. Alone.